Sean Wayman: The Museum of Socialist Art, Sofia
The Museum of Socialist Art, Sofia
If it were not for the sculpture garden,
who would ever come out to this dismal place,
where long-poured concrete has been left to harden
as parking lots and unleased office space?
Yet come we do, hoping to unearth
a brilliant gleam amidst the ashen waste,
to prise out that object of uncommon worth—
the relic that will brighten understanding.
Yet should this dream-goal prove too demanding,
experience, close and coarse-grained, may suffice;
we buy our tickets and head towards the yard.
Set by the gate, as if to advertise
some new brand or fad, is a huge, red-starred
finial, the former stickpin of Party House.
It stands now in a state of disregard,
atoning for the passions it had once aroused.
Beyond wait the statues, each on its plinth,
surrounded by spring grass, as green as absinthe.
We follow a path down the gentle slope
towards the collection of statues and busts—
an assembly of astonishing scope.
The restless eye, drawn here and there, entrusts
itself to no one form. These shifts portend
awareness of how violently this garden thrusts
all of its sculptures together, close-penned.
Each was designed to command a single space
(a public square or a glass display case),
like a shrine image set on its pedestal.
Then every passing eye was raised
to meet its image, grave and terrible,
the stern ideal that the sculptor had phrased.
Though it cannot return to that prominence—
that hilltop from which it had been displaced—
we could still view it singly, at close distance,
spurning the yard-penned agglomeration.
We make a start, fixing concentration
on a woman fighter, carved in high relief.
Stout and thick-legged, she surges forward,
her jaw clenched in adamantine belief;
behind her back, she wields a heavy sword.
Who knows what injustices shall be slayed
on the crowless battlefield she moves toward?
Next along is a portrait of Lenin, portrayed
as a tradesman in a flat cloth cap.
Chin jutted forward, ready for a scrap,
he strikes an insurrectionary pose.
Next is another Lenin—this one capless
yet otherwise alike. Again it shows
him as protector of the hapless;
the tidy moustache and close-trimmed goatee
project a manly strength. Not for him the sapless
waiting of the bourgeoisie. A devotee
of immediate action, he discerns
how slowly justice progresses and yearns
to give it a shove. There are some other heads,
but all of them defenders of the Cause.
There’s one of Marx; deep thought threads
two parallel lines in his brow. By force
of comradeship, or glamour, Che Guevara
has also earned a place. We briefly pause
to catch his famed beret. Doctor Mara
Maleeva-Zhikova’s next—a surprise
in that she’s a woman. At first we surmise
that hers is a tokenistic presence,
but then, further along the way, we meet
her again, learning that she was the President’s
wife. Head held erect, she’s ready to greet
the people—her smile of royal condescension
affixed. Yet whether in bronze or concrete,
no other figure gains half the attention
that’s granted here to Lenin. That’s him, seated
this time. In all else the sculpture’s repeated
the now-familiar motifs: the prideful nose;
the facial hair; the steady gaze, intent
on confrontation. As we draw close,
to study the iconography, dissent
begins to rouse within. With a start,
I see what should long have been apparent:
these “realist” sculptures are religious art.
This statue before us is a Russian icon;
by choice of pose, the sculptor seems to liken
the Leader to the Virgin Mary, enthroned.
Though he wears no halo, nor is he flanked
by seraphim, the baby Jesus disowned
most of all, for dignity he isn’t outranked
by the Empress-Virgin in a lapis robe.
In the centre of the park, its sacrosanct
core, there’s a whole icon-gallery to probe.
The figures here are the most monumental.
Of course, it can’t be coincidental
that these are the Soviet leadership,
along with their local franchisees.
A religiously-minded readership
would’ve turned their gaze, attentive, on these
and seen Christ Pantocrator, Ruler of All.
Not even standing as high as his knees,
we look up at Lenin. Of supernatural
height, he surveys the entire yard,
his gaze never shutting, no detail disbarred
from his notice. In the park hereabouts
all his acolytes rise, their bearing
as erect as a cross. Still, we have our doubts
about the local brass, these trenchcoat-wearing
saints. Take, for instance, Georgi Dimitrov:
he’s shown here, tall and martial, commandeering
Stalin’s moustache. Yet it hasn’t brought off
the intended effect (or at least
not to the fullest degree). The creased,
baggy pants and his oversized coat
look like somebody’s hand-me-downs.
There’s something about his figure now, remote
from power and consequence, which sounds
a note of melancholy. And so we leave him,
heading towards the edge of the grounds.
On the way, we pass statues of workers—slim
in both stature and quantity. Two, peasant
women, hurry fieldwards, as if a present
awaited them there. Going barefoot
and shouldering hoes, they thrust out each stride
devotedly. A few steps on, they’re put
up against the tableau of the giants behind,
the colossi of this Communist Thebes;
the apparatchiks have been deified,
the workers depicted as antlike plebes.
And then we reach the foot of the yard.
A block of flats with a pale, grey facade
juts up beyond the boundary fence.
Blank of expression, it looks out across
the sculpture garden’s unpeopled expanse.
Turning around, I’m forcibly struck (at a loss
to see how it took so long) that the garden
is empty, apart from us. There is no gloss
to be put on it, no ready pardon
to be granted now; for locals, this place
is where spectres walk, the sacred space
of a vanished cult. Whatever bleak rites
were practised once in the veneration
of its concrete gods, this mirthless scene indicts
them all. Yet what then of their penetration
through every city and town in the land?
What of their ceaseless reiteration
through all the years the dream-realm spanned?
This empty scene, it answers this too—
more volubly, it seems, than any statue.
The locals have built a park-sized cage
for the idols of this toppled cult,
like pieces of bone from a saint or sage,
locked in a subterranean vault.
But the faith is dead. The grass is untrampled,
the paths untrod. No follower will now exult
in the mysteries that these forms exampled.
It’s thus, we defect from the pieties
of the surging, just-sworded deities.
Sean Wayman
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